Top 5 Risks You Hadn't Considered in Connected Cars

Grand Theft: Personal Data

Grand theft personal data: Now we have a new industry to trust with our personal data. Vehicles with Internet connectivity are already sending huge amounts of data to manufacturers, and while they have yet to do much with the information, it's only a matter of time before they start monetizing it. Additionally, if your personal data is connected with your car, this will present a real incentive for hackers to treat it as an easy, high-value target, especially with the industry lacking experience in protecting sensitive data.

Connected car security has been a hot topic ever since the experiment in which hackers remotely ran an Internet-connected Jeep off the road. Even if the average driver isn't necessarily scared that the same thing will happen to them, connected automobiles could disrupt our everyday lives in other ways. And, with an estimated250 million connected cars expected on the road by 2020, these disruptions could be coming sooner than you may think.

Automakers are eager to put Internet connectivity to good use – tracking down stolen vehicles, preprogramming trip routes, and even making driverless cars a full-scale reality — which Tesla is actively working on, having just rolled out its highly anticipated self-driving features. But that doesn't mean there won't also be a few side effects. Richard Kirk, SVP at AlienVault, the Silicon Valley-based provider of unified security management and crowd-sourced threat intelligence, outlines a few scenarios.

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